Weddingbee Blog

I dont particularly like the term DIY. Meg over at A Practical Wedding (one of my favourite blogs to read out there apart from Weddingbee) puts it well with the acronym DIT (Do It Together)… which I think, for brides, is an essential way to put it so you don’t just go… well, nuts. The weddings I drool over are stuffed with DIY details, from favor labels, to cute little drinking straws, right down to coat hangers. But… at the same time, when I start thinking of how our wedding can be “just like that,” then I’m losing the plot about what our wedding is really about: the start of our marriage, family… our love.

So while there definitely will be DIY projects for this wedding (sorry, I just can’t help myself… my fingers get itchy to do something crafty!), I need to keep reminding myself that they are not the “point” of the wedding, they aren’t the most important. So instead of DIY I will use the term “handmade”. Because, to me, “handmade” sums up what Mr E and I care about for our lives together:

The authentic, down to earth, take-us-as-we-come parts of our relationship. So when I say handmade I’m not just referring to craft projects, if that makes sense. I’m referring to the whole mindset of us creating our lives together from scratch. That is important to me.

And back to the craft projects—we have made rules for ourselves to save our sanity. The project has to not cause more stress than it is worth, and if it is just a project for the sake of the “DIY look”, then out it goes. I’m sure I’m going to mess up here a few times and take on a project that violates that, but as much as possible I want to keep those standards in mind. Oh, and it also means knowing when to give up on a project that is too hard for ourselves and pass it on to someone who does know what they are doing (hello Etsy, my mother, crazy talented friends). To sum it up, a post over at 2000 Dollar Budget Wedding puts it so much better than I ever could (a wedding as a “barn-raising”). Go read it if you need some encouragement or a kick up the pants. You’ll feel better afterwards.

What do you feel like your wedding is really about?